The economist...
"Portugal is to legalise abortion during the first ten weeks of pregnancy, after 59% of voters backed the change in a referendum. The Turnout was below 50%, so the result was not legally binding, but the government pledged to act on the result in any case."
step back for just a minute and look at the statistics... essentially what the results show are:
less the 50% percent of the population voted...
59% of <50% voted in favour...
we are not told the percentage of people that actually voted, but these results are pretty difficult to substantiate, when given in such vague terms...
and yet the government pledged to act on the result anyway...?
Secondly you have to look at the voters... those "pro-choice" campaigners will obviously have been pushing this, to actually get it to the stage that there was a referendum needed, and therefore one could expect a somewhat larger turnout in the booths then the "pro-life" contingent. But surely, if this was a matter of such importance in Portugal, you'd expect a much higher turnout?
I personally would be objecting to the Governments actions in this country, not necessarily even due to my own standpoint... but it strikes me as being a tad foolhardy to make such legislation in such a brazen way. I mean, surely they can't cite this referendum as proof of the peoples choice in this matter?
I probably haven't made my point terribly clearly.
But still... way to go Portugal! (that was sarcastic in case you hadn't noticed...)
step back for just a minute and look at the statistics... essentially what the results show are:
less the 50% percent of the population voted...
59% of <50% voted in favour...
we are not told the percentage of people that actually voted, but these results are pretty difficult to substantiate, when given in such vague terms...
and yet the government pledged to act on the result anyway...?
Secondly you have to look at the voters... those "pro-choice" campaigners will obviously have been pushing this, to actually get it to the stage that there was a referendum needed, and therefore one could expect a somewhat larger turnout in the booths then the "pro-life" contingent. But surely, if this was a matter of such importance in Portugal, you'd expect a much higher turnout?
I personally would be objecting to the Governments actions in this country, not necessarily even due to my own standpoint... but it strikes me as being a tad foolhardy to make such legislation in such a brazen way. I mean, surely they can't cite this referendum as proof of the peoples choice in this matter?
I probably haven't made my point terribly clearly.
But still... way to go Portugal! (that was sarcastic in case you hadn't noticed...)
posted by mrjohnfernandez at 1:32 pm
3 Comments:
It's no big deal.. it's the same here. look at the 2005 general election: Labour have a 67-seat majority despite only polling 35.2% of the popular vote - 22% of the 61% turnout.
2 million people protested against the Iraq war on the streets of London - more of a referendum than any election in my living memory. Did the government listen? No.
Still, that's democracy for you.
So... they should have counted the votes of the people who couldn't be arsed to turn up?
Seriously, though, if governments couldn't act until a majority of the population had got off their sofas then governments couldn't act full stop. This is why we have a representative government in the first place. Referenda are actually one step above this approach in terms of democracy.
Democracy is the worst possible political system. Apart from all the others.
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